1. Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the present invention generally relate to a data protection system and, more particularly, to a method and apparatus for providing time synchronization in a data protection system.
2. Description of the Related Art
A typical organization may employ a data protection system to backup and restore mission critical data. For example, the mission critical data may be transmitted from a computing environment (e.g., a plurality of client computers) and stored at a remote site (e.g., a plurality of data storage devices). The data as well as one or more operations (e.g., storage and/or file system operations) may be stored as a backup image and an input/output journal.
If a disaster (e.g., power failure, data corruption, flash flood and/or the like) strikes the computing environment and destroys data, the mission critical data is recovered from the backup image and the input/output journal at the remote site. For example, an administrator may restore the mission critical data with the backup image that corresponds with the point-in-time right before the disaster struck. In other instances (e.g., a lost file), the administrator may restore the mission critical data at any point-in-time.
In order to ensure that the correct point-in-time is chosen, the time at the remote site and the computing environment must be synchronized. If the respective times are not synchronized, then inconsistencies occur during the recovery of the mission critical data. As a result, an inaccurate storage state is recreated at the computing environment. For example, if the time is skewed by five seconds, then data that was modified during the five second time period may not be restored to the computing environment.
Therefore, there is a need in the art of a method and apparatus for synchronizing time within a data protection system, such as a continuous data protection system (CDP), to facilitate accurate storage state recreation.